When information handling systems, such as personal computers and the like, are mass-produced, a manufacturer may take advantage of a common software configuration when loading software onto the hard drives. For example, a computer system is set up as a model system having the desired software configuration that is to be duplicated in other personal computers. Once the model system has been set up, a digital image of the hard drive is created. The digital image is essentially a “picture” of the hard drive. Creating a digital image of the hard drive is well known to those skilled in the art. Once this image is created, it is distributed to the other hard drives requiring the same configuration. The result is that all of the computer systems receiving a copy of the image during their manufacturing and assembly process will have the same hard drive content as the model system.
For software upgrades on existing computer systems, an image is created for a set of changes to be made to the hard drive and the set of changes are then transferred to the computer systems. This results in quicker computer upgrades, which in turn provides a cost savings, particularly when a large number of computer systems are to be upgraded.
Nonetheless, a disadvantage of this approach is that it requires a model system first be set up utilizing the same operating system and the same set of applications as desired on the other computer systems. To set up the model system, the software must be physically loaded from a disk onto the model computer system before the image can be created for transferring to the other computers.
Even if a group of computers are networked together, a baseline configuration must also be established on the file server which requires that the file server physically be set up with the desired software configuration from a disk. The file server then allows the networked computers to have access to the new configuration. Networking prevents a system administrator from having to install software upgrades individually on each computer system. However, the upgrade must first be made to the file server which requires installation via a disk.
Additionally, in the past, information handling systems, such as desk-top computer systems, laptops, personal digital assistants, digital information appliances, and the like, were sold with little or no software. Therefore, the tasks of obtaining, installing and configuring software were left to the purchaser. However, in the ever increasingly competitive environment of the manufacture and sale of information handling systems, manufacturers generally provide hardware and software in a combined system that preferably, is usable out of the box. Further complicating this process is “build to order” computer systems. In build to order information handling systems, the customer may be given a wide selection of software from which to choose. The complexity and sheer number of choices result in essentially a custom configuration, the complexity of which is greatly increased with each choice or option given to the consumer.
One method utilized to address this problem involved extracting a hard drive from the assembly process, connecting the hard drive to a computer for the purpose of programming the drive, programming the drive, disconnecting the drive from the computer and returning the programmed hard drive to the computer assembly process for installation on a computer. However, this method is time consuming and, therefore costly. Furthermore, disconnection and reconnection of the programmed hard drive may corrupt the software programmed onto the drive.
An additional method utilized to address this problem involved loading the hard drive from a network after the computer hardware is assembled. However, this method results in high traffic on the network. In a large-volume manufacturing environment, this high traffic greatly reduces the throughput of the network. In essence, the greater the number of systems to be manufactured, the greater the requirement of network throughput. Furthermore, a network failure may interrupt and even cripple the entire manufacturing line.
Another method utilized to address this problem involved a parallel manufacture of a custom hardware configuration and software configuration. Hardware was built and software was written to a CD-ROM. The hardware system was then booted and software loaded to the system from the CD-ROM, after which the system was tested. However, this requires selective installation on the CD-ROM from a comprehensive software library located elsewhere on a network. Thus, the requirement of network resources and throughput limits are encountered again. Additionally, the use of that CD-ROM is limited to the computer system for which the CD-ROM was configured. Thus, a great number of CD-ROMs bad to be created for each new configuration desired.
Therefore, it would be desirable to provide an improved method for configuring software for a build to order system.